A rogue comment

My daughter’s newest 70 is a rogue. It’s her opinion that she’s an ok, not good much less great, rogue. So when she makes the statement that rogues are just a wee bit OP, I give it some consideration.

Her opinion is that in many ways the most OP ability the rogue has is shadowstep. The one weakness it had – that if your target started moving in the instant you stepped it’d be out of range – is gone. With that, she says it’s become a piece of cake to stunlock opponents. Including hunters. OK, that needs a touch of expansion.
The standard ‘trick’ for a hunter in PVP for coping with a rogue is to put a trap at your feet. While a lot of hunters use freeze traps, frost traps are the favorite of people like BRK. Simple reason – freeze lets you get to range and then open. Frost gives you terrain for kiting. Anyway, as a hunter you track stealth, watch for that ‘sneaky’ rogue coming from behind. If he gets close and nothing happens he’s disabling your trap – you’ve several options, but the key thing is you’ve got a few seconds to DO something. If he’s at range, no problem. Enter shadowstep.

25 yards out, in FRONT. Pop from front to directly behind, sap… whoops, no running. Suddenly its the freeze trap that takes precedence again. And woe betide the hunter who doesn’t put trap at his feet.

On top of this, my daughter was playing around in AV and discovered that in at least one place she can shadowstep to the top of a tower. I’ve asked her to tell me which one, but she’s not experienced enough (yet) to do that for me. So next time she plays I’m going to watch to find out. Of course, she intends to see if it’s possible to find a place to do that with other towers as well. She’s also been told by a friend with a Horde rogue that you can bypass bridge traps and flares that way too so as to get into the bunkers.

Note that line again. You can bypass traps and flares. One of the cruelest things she’s learned is rather obvious — you do not have to attack your shadowstep target. There is zero reason you can’t stealth, shadowstep, and then move on leaving the target untouched.

EVERY. 30. SECONDS.

Cloak of Shadows and Vanish and infinite stunlock were bad enough. Shadowstep…

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7 Responses to “A rogue comment”

Kirk i like your blog generally, but… you should stick to topics you know.

Shadowstep is definitely a very fun talent, and useful for espionage style missions in AV and such, but it severely gimps your damage, and is really not even practical in a serious arena build.

What is this “infinite stunlock” you’re referring to? A 100-0 stunlock is virtually impossible post BC unless your opponent is completely clueless. This is just one of the common items thrown into uninformed rogue discussions that make me cringe.

While I would agree that Rogues were probably a little OP during the HARP era, they’re definitely not OP now.

Let’s talk stunlock. A priest gets three very weak chances to get a breather from a rogue’s stun. The trinket applies IF they have it (my first planned purchase – remember this toon has never done PVP before). The Psychic scream happens IF I have an instant outside stun. Oh, yeah, and with Unbreakable Will there’s a 15% chance resisting the stun – one in ~6 times. In return I’m facing the maybe trinket (at level 70 that’s more often than not), and since this was an undead rogue there was also WotF. In exchange, oh experienced rogue, how many stunlock opportunities does he have? (grin).

Bluntly, I’d rather face ANY other class than a rogue. While others CAN stunlock, they can’t do enough damage during the lcok to kill me. And if I can get just a little time, I can heal and heal and heal. And all I have to do in BG PVP is heal till I get help.

That’s the second thing. Please reread – I’ve said over and over again BG-PVP. BG is not Arena. As it happens I’m beginning to suspect it’s got a bit of use in Arena too – my daughter will be testing that in a couple of weeks. Consider, just for one use, facing a caster. Shadowstep gives the mage a “target must be in front of you” message (saving your CoS) while putting you in position to make him waste a trinket. As another consider – ‘jumping’ onto the bridge from the ground is possible. (What I don’t know – and another thing my daughter will be testing – is if you can shadowstep through the pillars.)

And that “daughter” line is the final point. The OP statement is the opinion of my daughter, not me. To me, a healpriest, ALL rogues are OP – I hates them, I do. But her reasons are what she has developed WITH PRACTICE and EXPERIENCE. In BG-PVP (NOT, again, ARENA) her experience has been it’s been a major technique in defeating well-geared (and so presumably experienced) other players. Consistently.

For what it’s worth, most (not all, but most) priests consider the rogue the most difficult opponent with Warlocks being close behind. (Stunlock, chain fear. Either way, it sucks to receive and never to give.) If you’re getting eaten by priests I’d love to know how. So would a lot of other priests. Please share.

I’m playing both a rogue and a priest with moderate success, both are above 10K and 400 resilience.
I’ll try to elaborate a bit more when i get some time but to keep it simple, if the situation is that neither of you have pvp stuff then you are probably wearing pve stuff. Rogue PVE stuff is designed to improve your damage output. While priest pve stuff is not designed to soak up damage but to heal (and even wearing “of stamina” gear doesn’t help, it gives you hp but no armor or resi). So it’s not surprising that at low pvp gear rogue vs priest is greatly biased toward the rogue and you not survivng the initial 10 seconds stun. However as you gear up you’ll see that you can survive the stun. You’ll also end up wearing the trinkets, save it for the Kidney shot not the Cheap Shot.
It stays that having a rogue on you will monopolize your attention, you can’t be doing a lot much more than defend against him, but you’ll certainly not get gimped as you used to. To illustrate this in the current state of arenas the rogue frequently takes the role of active cc, sticking to a healer to shutdown his ability to heal his team.
Keep using instants, try not to cast unless you see the rogue at 0 energy (you’ll get used to monitor the energy bar).

And as you said it’s BG and not arena, odds are you will not be alone and he neither. He’ll probably be controlled, stunned, sheeped or feared to give you some time and you’ll probably get gibbed by that ret pally or warrior or lolmage. 1 priest vs 1 rogue isn’t something that is supposed to happen in BG

Celimos, yeah, I figure as I get better gear it’ll quit being a problem. As I said, I didn’t do much PVP with this priest.

But that raises part of the issue. I get to finally be resistant to the degradations a rogue inflicts after – not just after I reach 70, but after I die enough to be able to get high armor/resilience/hp gear.

With the exception of a brief window of opportunity, a heal-priest is raw meat for a competent rogue. The window is the brief time the priest has psychic scream but the other-than-undead rogue doesn’t have a counter.

General aside – I know that every class has its bete noir – the black beast that requires luck or incompetence to defeat. It disturbs me that for so many classes the beast is either a rogue or a warlock. Not really rock-paper-scissors, is it?

On a more positive note, gear, spec and experience do make a difference. Trinket on the second stun. Scream them anyway. If you get lucky with a heal crit or a focus proc, you’ll make it through to the second scream. If you make it that far, and nobody comes along to spoil the party, you’ll have held them for 30 seconds. Keep holding. SW:P. Starshards. Shadow fiend. Keep going 🙂

About…

I've experience with many priests of many races and specs on several servers. The more I play, the more I realize how much I do not yet know. This is a share of some of what I have learned.
My main these days is Zingiber on the Undermine server.